SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Fruit Stripe Gum, something of a childhood icon for many gum chewers over the past five decades, will soon fly over the rainbow with its colorful zebra mascot Yipes — seemingly forever.
The maker of Fruit Stripe Gum, Chicago-based Ferrara Candy Co., told Food & Wine magazine on Tuesday that it will no longer offer the product; On Wednesday, an unidentified company spokesman did the same for CNN. Ferrara did not respond Thursday to multiple requests from The Associated Press seeking confirmation of his decision.
Fruit Stripe is perhaps best known for its oversized packs of spectrally striped gum sticks, each with a distinct fruit flavor that typically dissipates quickly when chewed. For years, packs included temporary tattoos of the brand's mascot Yipes, the rainbow zebra, that children could place on their arms, legs and faces; Gum chewers often joked that the tattoos lasted much longer than the flavor of the gum.
The gum's fleeting taste was so notorious that it ended up in a fittingly short gag on the animated sitcom Family Guy.
Yipes also had a small cult following, particularly when the company coined “Yipes!” Stripes!” as a commercial buzzword.
The gum was first released in 1969 by former candy maker Beech-Nut, but ended up in Ferrara after a series of corporate handovers and mergers. Ferrara itself is a unit of the Italian conglomerate Ferrero.